


Flower Pains

by CravenWyvern



Series: DS Extras [26]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15561270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CravenWyvern/pseuds/CravenWyvern
Summary: Marigold, the "herb of the sun", passion, creativity.Cruelty, grief, jealousy.Rose, lavender, butterfly weed.A bitter flower bouquet.





	Flower Pains

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I think of the hanahaki disease I can never settle on one flower.
> 
> There is too much to consider, when it comes to thoughts and feelings.

His coughing was getting worse, little by little.

This morning had him awake with a throat full of orange petals, red and yellow and so very small, chest aching with every stinging breath he had to take to get his panic to settle. They were not full flowers, not yet at any rate, but blood tinged his hands and he had to spit out a tangle of uprooted roots, stiff green stalks and fern leaves, and the blood laden on them caused a shiver up his spine and for the world to stutter a moment.

The scent was the worse part of it all, flowery and laden on his breath, and if he'd been given the choice he'd have picked something, anything other than marigolds. 

These colors were not his, and it made him nauseous every time he now caught sight of something all too warm looking, his throat tickling with unspent coughs and the hovering pain that was just behind that.

At least he was away from camp, away from people who'd stop and stare, ask questions or, even worse, assume things on their own terms.

He reached up, adjusted the collar of his shirt and suit jacket, brushing briefly over the growth that was occurring under his clothing and wincing when it sent sparks of tugging pain through the nerves of his skin. The roots were stringy and slow growing, him having to get a good look by using his reflection in a frog infested pond, and they dipped and wove intimately close through his very skin. Scars, from where he had at first tried to tug the growth right off, were still fairly new, but at least blood was dry. The scabs would get thicker, worse as it spread up his neck, and hopefully by then he'd have a scarf to hide the damage.

The entwined roots along his wrists, however, may end up being a problem. 

He raised a hand, eyed what he could see exposed from his sleeve and glove, and eventually he knew the uncurling leaves would start slipping past, into the open air. And who knew what would happen when the damn flowers start blooming, crawling the thin skin of his wrist and peering out from the clothing he had on. 

His secret would be out then, or more out then it already was. Not many at camp had the coughing fits, and those that did either resolved it or crawled away, far from camp to choke to death and die.

The people with the reoccurring fits always got on his nerves, even though he was one of them.

The marigolds were not his flower, not his favorite at least, and he hadn't even known the name for them until that old bitty had cleared her throat and spoken up, eyeing him over her glasses as she babbled about the flowers origins and its history. The children liked to learn of flowers, especially his niece, but he found it incredibly irritating.

He didn't care what the flower was called, what it symbolises or was used for. He could care less for something that rooted in his lungs and spread through him like a disease, a cancer that slowly suffocated him, a parasite. He's died by it too many times to count by now to give a damn about it.

Sometimes he'd stumble on corpses, old skeletons bearing his rags, ribcages wreathed with marigolds and skulls covered in roots, digging deep into the earth underneath, blooms flowering and slowly overtaking his deceased body. Sometimes it wasn't just marigolds; red roses thronged with lavender, flowers of names he did not know nor want to acknowledge, blue and purple and snow white, small bundles of orange butterfly weed scattered about and growing in between skeleton fingers, up the wrist and around the elbow, to patch up on an exposed shoulder blade.

Most of the time, he left them alone. Graves, in their own way, and he got shivers up his spine at the thought of disturbing them, of the peace and quiet it would be, to lie down and let the flowers overtake him.

Other times, however, he'd get his hands on a shovel, white knuckled and void of thoughts, furious and yet so very empty as he made his way back to the flower graves, eyes burning with hatred.

Desecrating his own graves, though he's been growing the habit of grave robbing for quite some time now. 

He sighed, heavily, a tickle in the back of his throat that he stubbornly ignored, swallowed past. It clung to him, both this awful coughing and these awful flowers, this scent he found sickening more and more nowadays. His very skin itched, roots digging just under the surface, and sometimes all he wanted to do was to speed up the process, finish this round as the flowers slowly took hold.

If he was to guess, gutting himself would only end up with the damn flowers pouring out of him, barely a speck of blood as the parasite ate up everything inside him.

This odd thought made him hesitantly press a hand to his belly, only feeling his worn clothing and soft flesh underneath, no roots or stiff stalks pressing up from under thin neglected skin. 

Sometimes, just based off the pain that would engulf him and incapacitate him for days on end, it was as if the flowers had already gobbled up his organs, ate through the soft meat of his body, and that all that was in him now was just one big bush of roots and stalks and leaves and flower bulbs, still not ready for the first bloom.

Having his hand to his belly reminded him of something and he heaved a sigh, easily ignored the grumble from his empty stomach.

He needed to eat, especially since this parasitic flower was leeching the nutrients right out of his bones, but…

It was a right pain, trying to get food from the center of camp. There was always someone nearby, someone always watching, and always someone ready to narrow their eyes and call out in that mocking tone that look, the freeloader, the useless mouth to feed, the waste of space, was back again to steal away with good meals that could go to growing children and useful members of the camps society.

He could hardly stand it at the best of times, and all too often he found himself avoiding the area altogether. He didn't have nearly enough good days to try and tank the teasing and belittling that rose up whenever he was around.

It was best to go out scavenging for himself. Then, if he found something good, he didn't have to actually share.

And the obligation to share never really showed up, since he usually went back to his tiny piece of the camp empty handed.

The hares were difficult to catch already, but the people of the camp made it harder with their traps set about, traps the rabbits slowly but surely were learning. And when he did stumble upon a downed one, the trapped animal shivering and shaking inside its cage, he had to clench his fists and turn away. 

People were watching, and those traps always had ways to show when they had been tampered with. If he stole a rabbit, the whole camp would know the next day.

And berries, carrots, the farms were even harder. People were working in those, all the time. Weeds had to be taken care of constantly.

And weeding excess flowers, from someone spitting up seeds and petals that settled into rich soil, was a constant job. He didn't have any chance of spiriting away with something from those places.

That left very little for him to scavenge for on his own. The world was large, but the map he had helped construct in the middle of camp, small duplicates handed out to everyone, showed every little piece of this horrid island, and as such every square inch of it has been explored and exploited.

For the good of the main camp, at least, though at times he wished he could just wander off and get lost out there, to find another section of new ground, to be able to sketch it out and carefully ink in a calm pastime back in a much smaller campsite.

But with everything exposed, there was no more hidey holes, and there was no more need for him to draw and map out.

His use as mapmaker was void now, and without that distraction to keep him from thinking of the roots and leaves in the back of his throat, flower petals sticking to the roof of his mouth and his tongue, his coughing fits were more and more frequent.

As well as his times just doing nothing, he supposed. What else was he to do, anyway?

Find food, he thought dully, stomach growling grumpily under his hand before he shifted from the tree trunk he was sitting upon, going for the pack he had sat down next to him. The cut trunk was rough, not at all the most comfortable seat, and he was tempted to just shakily slide down into the dirt and use it as a back rest but he didn't quite know if he'd be able to get himself back up afterwards.

A sudden wave of hunger lapped through him, a heat wave and burn in his gut, which he quietly ignored, jaw set. The tingling in his throat intensified, rubbing raw, but he stubbornly pushed that away as well.

No reason to think about something he couldn't fix, after all.

Pulling the book out from his bag, hands shaky but grip still well enough, he carefully set it on is lap, the engraved cover blazing crimson and heavy up at him. He almost automatically let his hand brush over it, feel his own marked signature, before another sigh escaped him and he opened it up, the wiggling words and script catching his eye.

There wasn't much it wanted to tell him anymore, but that was alright. At least it talked to him, somewhat.

Even if, him eyeing with distaste the pencil sketched image of a blooming marigold, it just mocked him nowadays with its knowledge. He supposed it was entertaining enough, at least for a distraction.

The thrum of suddenly not being able to breath ran up his throat, a clogged feeling as he raised a hand and attempted to cover his mouth in the coughing fit, hunching his shoulders as he hacked and gurgled in slim amounts of air.

Petals escaped his fingers, drifted to the books pages, but he was able to keep the blood from splattering it.

It took a moment, a thread of hysteria catching him as he still couldn't breath, suffocating as he coughed even more, before finally something dislodged and he was able to suck in a deep breath of cool air. Swallowing roughly, throat aching and feeling something stiff be swallowed down, he straightened up, just breathing deep, eyes closed and face dipped down into a wrinkled frown of minor pain.

When he finally caught his breath, the stinging in his lungs raw and sharp and cruel, he opened his slightly watering eyes and let his gaze drift back down to the Codex Umbras pages.

On it, as if in answer, was a pencil sketch drawing of a ribcage, bones expertly shaded, and the set of lungs set inside was overflowing with bloomed marigolds, crawling roots creeping from the burst open organs and twisting about the bones, a grostique bouquet.

He sighed, brushing the petals he had coughed up off the page and into the grass.

He didn't even have the energy left in him to be mad.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Apparently I make it a habit to not ever mention names in more personal works.


End file.
